Forgotten Wars: The End of Britain's Asian Empire [Paperback]

An excellent read, well written and apparently unbiased. The authors cover the return of British forces primarily in Burma and Malaya. Also covering the British military operations in Indochina and Indonesia and the events leading to the Partition of India.

The book covers a huge scope of much neglected history and should be read by anyone interested in this region. Especially the sections on Burma and Malaysia.

My only complaint is that the sections on each country ends with the departure of the British. I would have enjoyed reading a postscript of the politics of those countries after the end of military actions.

The title is from an European perspective. In Asia the war against the Japanese and the various other wars, such as the ones against western imperialism in Surabaya, Saigon, Malaya, etc., have never been forgotten. All these are described in beautiful prose and with the perceptive and sensitive eye of true humanitarians as well as the confidence and skill of two fine historians. Having read their earlier book, The Forgotten Armies, I only hope that there is another to come to complete a trilogy. Bayly and Harper have done a great service to those who wish to understand today's political situation in Asia and the world. They should be essential reading for them.

This book might have been better titled "Forgotten Politics". There is very little searching military history and although the authors imply objectivity their thinly veiled socialist idealism and anti-colonial stance reveals itself in the alternative relish or disdain of their language. Apart from a few central figures the British, and particularly the British military, are anonymous stereotypes of repression, ignorance, cynicism and atrocity. On the other hand the various socialist or communist players are treated warmly and there is much brotherly coded language for these fellow travellers on the long march. Indeed, in some instances the authors quote lengthy tracts of blatant communist propaganda quite uncritically.

Reading this book - and at times it is dry drudgery as another reviewer has observed - one gets no sense whatsoever as to how the communist insurgents were defeated in Malaya, at least not from a military perspective. Their struggle goes from promise to defeat with little illumination as to the real causes, other than an arguably unnecessary and certainly tiresome amount of detail on the internicine rivalry and politics within the socialist/communist communities. As I drew near to the end I became more irritated and occasionally convinced that the imperative behind the book was a combination of ideological drivel and idealistic nostalgia for Marxism hidebound by revisionist socialist presumptions of good and bad, victim groups and oppressors. I began to become suspicious of truth in the pages and to wonder just what propaganda had been included and what facts had been ommited in order to create a narrative acceptable to modern left-liberal prejudices and presumptions about Empire. This is probably unfair on the authors but I agree with another reviewer who wrote "The authors also condemn Britain for every action (the only Britons getting any credit at all are leftists like Tom Driberg) while giving a soft ride to the Communists and other 'insurgents'". Everything is indeed Britain's fault, even the religious and racial violence manifest in the emergent independent nations, and the authors seem to have no concept of the ills before Empire or objective balance enough to compare it. In respect of Malayan history one gets absolutely no insight into how the colonial relationship developed on the basis of mutual benefit - it is instead characterised throughout as wholly exploitative. The implications of Lord Kimberley's letter to the Governor of the Straits Settlements in 1873 and its results are completely ignored. Here is ethnic romanticism on a grand scale and in carefully documenting the petty squabbles, class, religious and racial divisions within the emergent "new" nations the authors have no sense of irony. Is all that Britain's fault too? At times the authors' formulaic leftist presumptions border on the grotesque.

Yes, the authors lift the lid on an obscured time and place but what emerges is not history, certainly not military history, but more a scanning here and there, of anecdote, observation and conclusion heavily larded with ideological subjectivity. There is little colour and the few personal writings alluded to seem contrived to bolster an anti-British viewpoint, even where they are fictional rather than factual. The depth (or shallowness) of the treatment is inconsistent and the narrative hops around in time and location. On first reading it is easy to be impressed by this book but on reflection the treatment reveals itself to be superficial - and ultimately flawed by the political presumptions and prejudices woven into the text by the authors. Just one example of this presumptive approach will suffice, but there are many others:-

"Even in India, the republic's fragility in its early years resulted in a dangerous slowing down of radical political and economic change. National and social revolutions had either run into obstacles or been only partially accomplished. The old bureaucracies lived to fight another day."

Despite the historical evidence of almost 100 years the authors seem to be unaware of, or perhaps naively blind to, the fact that social revolution from the left brings its own forms of repression, injustice, elitism, division and dogma. This is not a textbook on the Malayan Emergency by any means, but more a polemic against Empire. Some of the revisionist exposés of government "atrocities", dwelt on it detail at the expense of an overall and more balanced perspective of the anti-communist campaign, are worthy of a sensationalist Channel 4 documentary. You will find nothing about the cynical methods of communist subversion and intimidation, no documenting of communist atrocities against civilians, no accounting for the economic destruction wrought by them which ultimately harmed ordinary Malays. The influence and involvement of Chinese communism is disavowed or glossed over, with some serious facts of Asian comintern history ommited entirely. The emergence of independent India is so enshrouded in leftist myth about saintly Indians and British bogeymen that there is little hope of any objective enlightenment in this lifetime - and there is none in this book. The Dutch attempts to re-impose colonialism on the East Indies are seen here from a curiously slanted anti-British perspective. The maelstrom of post-war Burma also manages to denigrate the British military administration with a broad brush, underplay ethnic divisions and again cast British politics and personalities in a generally villainous and exploitative light. For the interesting British involvement in Vietnam, tackled very badly in this book, Peter M Dunn's "The First Vietnam War" is more scholarly, more detailed, more searching and ultimately more rewarding, as well as being written from a more objective viewpoint.

Do read the book. But read it forwarned and forarmed about its subjectivity and read it as an almost text book example of how modern leftist academic dogma can treat history.